​​The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC).The CCDC websites use cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. For more details about cookies and how to manage them, see our cookie policy.

Blog

You may not have yet heard about CSD Communications. Or you may have known them as they were previously recognized by the community: Private Communications. If you are one of our depositors we may have asked you if you would like your unpublished data to be included in the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) as one. If you use the CSD for your research then you may have found the answers you were looking for by using a unique structure or refinement, shared with the community as a CSD Communication, that otherwise would have remained unpublished, confidential and unknown.

Jack Dunitz is a well-known chemist and chemical crystallographer with an extraordinary research history in structural chemistry. A recurring theme in Jack’s research has been use of crystal structure analysis to study chemical problems such as molecular conformation, reaction paths, intermolecular interactions, molecular motion in solids and solid-state reactions. It is not surprising therefore, given his research history, that Jack has long had a close connection with both the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) and the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC). Not only has Jack been a staunch supporter and frequent user of the CSD, he was also one of the inaugural Governors of the CCDC when the centre was first established as an independent, not-for-profit organisation and served on the board from 1987-1999.

We announced in February a substantial change to our software release pattern with a target of four software releases during 2018, rather than the usual single release around November time. This shorter development and release cycle allows us to be more responsive to user feedback as well as helping to ensure a continuously improving and stable software system. This current update is our second software release of the year (2018 CSD Release Update 2) with two more planned in the second half of 2018.

We’re happy to announce the start of our 4th Annual #CSD3DPrint Twitter contest. Just in time for the start of summer, our popular 3D printing contest kicks off again today. To participate, simply create a 3D printed model using Mercury and your 3D printer of choice. Snap a photo of the model and tweet it with the hashtag #CSD3DPrint.

Alongside our web interface to access the CSD (Access Structures/WebCSD) we recently launched a web page where you can log in and vote on what features you’d like to see added or improved in the interface. The first of these directly user-driven improvements via the WebCSD Ideas voting page is the ability to expand the 3D visualiser to full screen which is now available to all users in our free Access Structures service as well as WebCSD.

2018 marks the beginning of a shift in the release pattern for the CSD System – we are starting to provide our user community with the option to install smaller software updates more frequently. This approach to software development has been shown very clearly over the years to result in a better overall product for users.

We launched the latest version of our CSD web searching interface, WebCSD v2, during the summer of 2017. Since then, we’ve also added a range of new features to the interface including the ability to perform unit cell searches, structural similarity searches and included query highlighting. We’re keen to get further feedback from you, our user community, about the interface and how you think it should be developed in the future.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas and that means it must be time for the annual CSD Release! The 2018 CSD Release is indeed now available for download from the CCDC website – do fetch the new installers if you haven’t done so already. This year’s release includes a range of improvements in the software as well as the data based on your feedback over the year, including one improvement that has been very frequently asked about in recent years.

We are delighted to announce that this week we have added some new functionality to our deposition services. Depositors are now able to link to raw data files and provide crystallographer details during deposition as well as revise their data more easily.